Free would be best, but I would pay for something that I could use to create DVDs in the future. I am using a Canon digital camera to take my video. It has a high frame rate setting that takes terrific videos, but they are too high in resolution and the file sizes are quite large.

From my research, Cyberlink's Power Director sounds pretty good.

For now I just need to take my MPEGs and reduce them a bit in quality (and size) for posting on Photobucket. I'd also like to render them in slow motion.

I use Pinnacle Studio 11. You can usually find a good deal on it from various websites. They are always running mail in rebates for it. I think I paid $15 for it after all the discounts and it is normally $120. I picked mine up at Best Buy.

its also a great tool for going thru your drives frame by frame with the slider.

sometimes if the clips are compressed differently or run at different fps they wont join. when that happens i just use windows movie maker that comes with xp. I still edit all the clips with virtualdub.